Over the last few days, a public Twitter exchange with racial overtones has broken out between USATF Athletes Advisory Committee (AAC) chair Dwight Phillips and athletes Lauren Fleshman and Nick Symmonds. The exchange began with Fleshman tweeting at the USATF Athletes Advisory Committee Twitter account about not receiving any emails from the AAC this year and Phillips responding by implying that Fleshman was being racist (Phillips is black, Fleshman and Symmonds are white).

Things escalated from there with Phillips eventually including Symmonds in the conversation and accusing Oiselle (Fleshman’s sponsor) and Brooks (Symmonds’ sponsor) of being racist with regard to the athletes they sponsor.

Phillips seems unpleased with the racial make-up of this group

Then yesterday, a completely separate Twitter argument began between Phillips and marathoner Patrick Rizzo on issues surrounding the 2016 U.S. Olympic Marathon Trials. We have embedded the tweets from both those conversations below in (mostly) chronological order. Fleshman, Symmonds and, recently, Rizzo have been very vocal in their complaints about USATF.

Quick Thought #1:When the head of the AAC is having a public Twitter battle with the athletes who are under his care, implying they are racist, it’s not a good day for the sport and is a controversy the sport does not need.

On the first page of the AAC section on the USATF website it states that the AAC’s mission is to “communicate the interests and protect the rights and privileges of athletes” and that it will achieve this by “treat[ing] our athletes with respect and appreciation.”

We’re a long way from achieving the AAC mission, as in 2016 there isn’t anything much more disrespectful that you can do to someone than to publicly imply they are racist.

Quick Thought #2: In case you didn’t already know it, Twitter is not the place for people to have constructive dialogue.

That was the last of the Twitter exchange on April 3rd. Then yesterday, April 5th, 2:13 marathoner Patrick Rizzo sent a public message to Phillips and another heated argument followed, this time between Rizzo and Phillips with Fleshman eventually joining in.

For those not familiar with the topic of discussion, after the Olympic Marathon Trials in February, Rizzo wrote a blog post about what he felt the organizational shortcomings were in LA. It would seem that that blog post eventually turned into a conversation between Rizzo and Phillips/USATF.